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From: Rich Graves
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: David Irving bashes Internet for telling the truth
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 11:53:14 -0700
Organization: Stanford University
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On Thu, 12 Sep 1996, Jamie McCarthy wrote:
> rcgraves@ix.netcom.com (Rich Graves) wrote:
>
> > While I'm sure Mr. Irving could not tell a URL from a college degree,
> > neither of which he possesses,
>
> He has a bachelor's in history if I'm not mistaken.
You are mistaken. Reset your ZOG decoder ring. In Mr. Irving's response to
Shallit, http://www.codoh.com/irving/irvshallreply.html , he acknowledges
that he has no degree. In the introduction to his book _Goebbels_, he says
he studied at the University of London, then went to work in a factory in
Germany, where he learned German. He doesn't say what position he held.
I'll get the exact text from his book when I go home.
Mr. Irving accurately responds that "The same can be said for Winston S.
Churchill, Thomas Babington Macaulay (The History of England), and the
Gibbon who wrote The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, etc. Would you
denigrate them as 'historians' too?" I don't believe that any of them
preceded their books with IMO misleading statements about the colleges they
had attended. Mr. Irving's intent seems to be to give the impression that he
got an undergraduate degree from the first college, then went to the second
for graduate studies.
Of course Mr. Irving's intimate familiarity with the Nazi period has never
been denied, and he has contributed greatly to the historical record -- he
is right to criticize professional historians for being so loath to
recognize him as a source for the Eichmann papers and transcriptions of
Goebbels' handwriting. Thanks to his biases, Mr. Irving has contacts that
"establishment" historians would never be able to get. At his appearance in
Oakland, Mr. Irving spoke of sharing more than one bottle of wine at 2:00 in
the morning with Hitler's personal photographer and his wife (sorry, don't
have his book in front of me -- he's credited in the prologue and in the
captions to most of the photos of the Reich leadership). Irving told how the
photographer, rather drunk, had opened up to Irving about how he had
witnessed a mass shooting on the Eastern Front. He told how the man's wife
said, "But I've never heard that before. You can't tell me that's what you
saw. Women and children? Tell me it's not true." And the man fell silent.
I think it is highly unlikely that a professional historian without Mr.
Irving's biases would have been able or willing to spend so much time with
such a man -- partying into the wee hours of the morning, essentially --
and to tell such an illuminating anecdote.
Irving's familiarity with the Nazi period is a credit to history. It is his
dishonesty in deliberately misrepresenting both himself and the Nazi period
that is at issue. Some people point to Mr. Irving's lack of academic
credentials as evidence that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I
disagree. He understands exactly what he's talking about, and yet he
continues to make excuses for it. I think that's far worse.
> > Mr. Irving, in the context of describing his lifelong dedication to
> > studying the Nazi era in a sympathetic light, and his efforts to get
> > himself taken seriously, suggested, presumably without intended irony,
> > that Jamie McCarthy, a Macintosh and web programmer who webmasters for the
> > Nizkor Project part-time on a volunteer basis, should "get over his
> > obsession and find something better to do with his life"
>
> Hey, people have been telling me to "find something to do with my life"
> since I was in the 3rd grade. If any readers happen to bump into Mr.
> Irving, would they kindly tell him I don't need any advice at present,
> and would he please answer my latest letter in print rather than talking
> about me behind my back?
In fairness to Mr. Irving, this was a response to a direct question from me;
he wasn't really talking behind your back, because he knew I was a friend of
yours. I don't recall the exact words, but it went something like:
Rich: You spoke of the vitriol and lies on the Internet many times, but
from where I sit, Nizkor looks pretty reasonable. You say you don't
bother to respond to the garbage online, but I've read your response
to Shallit on the IHR site, and you've responded to Jamie's letters.
David: Oh yes, McCarthy [I hadn't used your last name -- he remembered you.]
[Something about how he was sending a 7-page response to your latest
letter -- "though I don't know why," he said, rolling his eyes -- and
that you should find something better to do with your life.]
- -rich
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